April
17, 2000

AN
ELECTRONIC PEARL HARBOR?

The
BBC headline said it all: "Serb
Hackers on the rampage"  or did it? This was the story the media went
with in response to last week's spate of hacking attacks on a number of high
profile sites, including Addidas and Viagra, where the content was stripped
and replaced with a Serbian double-headed eagle emblem, along with the slogan
"Kosovo is Serbia." Gee, it must have been those nasty Serbs  after all,
who else would do it? Well, now that you mention it, there is at least one
alternative explanation: that this was an electronic Pearl Harbor, staged, just
like the 1941 version  as Robert
B. Stinnett points out in his recent book, Day
of Deceit  with perfect foreknowledge of the alleged "victim."

A
METHOD IN THE MADNESS

What
the BBC wasn't telling us, at least not that day, was that Serbian sites were
also attacked in the same time period  and in precisely the same manner.
As Jared Israel pointed out in an
article posted here, the BBC later revised their story that opened
up the possibility that others might be involved, and then ran a back
page item about the attacks on Yugo sites. But media bias against the Serbs,
especially on the part of the BBC, is hardly a story  at least to those
of us who have been covering this beat since the summer of last year. The BBC
is, after all, a government-controlled corporation under the direct control
of Tony Blair, who made the Kosovo war a personal crusade much as Maggie Thatcher
had made the reconquest of the Falklands her own. So we don't believe the official
explanation, but then what? Well, let's take a look at what kind of shenanigans
are taking place on the Internet these days  for the best clues to the
identities of the perpetrators are in their methods.

THE
MONOPOLISTS

All
of the recent hack attacks were cases of cyber-jacking, literally hijacking
a website by utilizing the automated software of the official domain guardian,
Network Solutions. As a government-privileged monopoly, the recently "privatized"
Network Solutions is in charge of handing out domain names and keeping a register
(or database) that records who owns what name. The whole process of registering
is automated: you can check and see if a domain name (JustinRaimondo.com) has
been homesteaded. If not you can apply electronically and the payment of a small
fee will give your claim legitimacy. Likewise, if you want to transfer ownership
and operation of a site to another party, you simply send those friendly folks
at Network Solutions an e-mail effecting the transfer. They e-mail you back,
to verify that it is really you, you reply  and the change is effected.
Without Network Solutions, we would be in a cyber-war of all against all, in
which rival claimants to a given domain name would be fighting it out, battling
to defend (or take back) their own beleaguered bit of cyber-turf  or so
the company's defenders (mostly in Congress) would have us believe. But if we
take seriously Network Solution's official explanation for the recent hijackings,
then the very basis of the Internet  the security and legitimacy of domain
names  may well be under attack. The war of all against all may have begun
 and the authors of this electronic Pearl Harbor are most likely not sitting
in Belgrade, but somewhere much much closer to home.

GOOD
MORNING  YOU'VE BEEN CYBER-JACKED

According
to Network Solutions, the recent "spoofings" of their system occurred in the
following manner: someone sent them an e-mail transferring the rights to a domain
name  say, Serbia-info.com  from SlobodanMilosevicInc@ethnic-cleanser.org
to HashimThaciEnterprises@narcoterrorist.com. Network Solutions then automatically
generates e-mail seeking verification, in effect asking "Are you sure you
want to do this?" If the recipient replies, then the change is put into effect.
What Network Solutions is asking us to believe is that, somehow, the automated
system by which domain names are registered and reregistered was "spoofed" 
that a verification e-mail sent by their system was somehow intercepted by the
spoofers, who then "answered" it and took over the sites  some 2,000 of
them, according to the London Metro, although Network Solutions says
it was "considerably less." Whatever the number, this strange outbreak of cyberwarfare
raises some equally strange questions . . .

WHAT'S
UP WITH THAT?

The
first is, how is it possible that the hackers emulated the web address of the
legitimate owners of those sites  every computer expert I have talked
to denies that this is plausible. It is possible, of course, that Network Solutions
e-mail verification system does not read the address line of incoming
change requests, and instead only reads the subject line and the
message itself. But this seems laughable, the equivalent of setting up a security
system with a hole big enough for an army of virtual Visigoths to pour through,
defacing and destroying everything in sight and undermining the very foundations
of the cyber- economy. So this cannot be the case  can it?

OLD-FASHIONED
FRAUD

The
shifty and contradictory non-explanations given by Network Solutions are the
basis of a remarkably
opaque article in the (British) Register, which avers that "Network
Solutions systems are not hacked, the e-outfit claims. It' s just a case of
old-fashioned fraud and deception." A representative of the company added that:

"There
was nothing stopping domain name owners to opt for other, more sophisticated
security measures if they want to ensure greater protection. Both an encrypted
password systems and a pretty good privacy (PGP) system are available from Network
Solutions and both are free of charge."

PERPETUAL
CYBERWAR?

Well,
yes, that's technically true, except that almost no one who runs a website
actually goes through the process of registering their domain name  their
Internet Service Provider (ISP) does it for them. And what they aren't telling
you is that the e-mail verification system is the default security system
in place for all domain owners  a system the Register describes
as "a bit like locking up your house and leaving the key under the nearest flower
pot." The Register maintains that " If security was an issue, they should
have done more to protect their property." But this response seems positively
Clintonian in its evasiveness and eerily irrelevant in the face of such a startling
revelation. For if we take the Network Solutions explanation at face value,
then the default security system for the entire Internet community is worse
than inadequate  it is an open invitation to cyberwarfare without end.

DON'T
WORRY, BE HAPPY

That,
at least, is one theory, the official story, which might be called the "Outside
Job" thesis: the idea that Network Solutions, which has been granted a government
monopoly on the domain-registration business, defends the integrity of its system
so weakly and ineffectively that it is possible for sites to be easily hijacked.
This theory places the blame on outside hackers  in this case, supposedly
"rampaging" Serbs. But the "Serbs-on-the-rampage" story was soon modified by
the BBC, which later acknowledged that Serb sites were also hacked. And this
whole "mad cyber-Serbs" scenario begins to fall apart when we look at the details
of this hack attack: Serbia-info.com was completely taken over and replaced
with lengthy ideological diatribes praising NATO, accusing the Serbs of genocide,
complete with graphics and all the familiar Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rhetoric.
The Western and Albanian sites that fell to the cyber-assault  an odd
mix of dot-coms and dot-orgs: commercial, political, sports, and Albanian sites
 were simply stripped of content and replaced with a polite little emblem
and a laconic "Kosovo is Serbia." Not only that, but these cyber-pirates of
the Net left a typically juvenile hint of their allegiance in their emblem,
like the hieroglyphic markings that deface every surface in our inner cities
and mark out the territorial claims of rival gangs. In small italic script at
the bottom of the double-headed eagle was a message: "Be happy if we hacked
your site, because we hack only the best sites on the Internet." Isn't it strange
that "rampaging Serbs" are paying Bosnia.com, the semi-official homepage of
the Bosnian government, such a high compliment  and telling them to "be
happy"? Be happy, don't worry  it's nothing. That's the "official" line
 but what is the truth? I don't want to engage in pure speculation,
but in view of Network Solution's inability to come up with a convincing lie,
one bereft of both the technical and the logical contradictions in the official
story, there is no way to proceed any further in solving this mystery of the
hijacked websites without examining alternative theories.

THE
'INSIDE JOB THEORY'

Counterposed
to the "Outside Job" thesis is the "Inside Job" theory, which holds that Network
Solutions is itself the key to the mystery  that the company is a front
for US intelligence operations. CIA-trained Albanian cyber-terrorists 
unleashed last
year by President Clinton in a top-secret special directive authorizing
full-scale cyberwarfare against targets in the former Yugoslavia  are
indeed on the loose, as the administrators of Serbia-info, yu.com, and others
can readily attest. But if they were behind the recent hack attacks,
then the question remains: how did they manage to intercept the e-mail verification
from Network Solutions and gain access to the site? Rather than positing some
arcane method of e-mail interception recently devised by private hackers, the
simplest explanation is that is was an inside job  inside Network Solutions,
that is.

BASTARD
CHILD

What
is this mysterious company, the Arbiter of Cyberspace, or more accurately:
who profits from this government-created monopoly?: an
excellent piece in the New Haven Advocate exposes Network Solutions
as the bastard child of affirmative action programs and the military-industrial
complex:

"In
1992, Congress asked the National Science Foundation to commercialize the Internet.
The NSF took competitive bids and awarded five-year contract to a consortium
that included what was then one of the nation's largest African-American owned
companies: Network Solutions Inc."

IT
COMES IN A BOX

Just
read between the lines. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the $5.9 million Congress
had appropriated was spent long before the company had even begun its grandiose
task of building an information system called "InterNIC," which would assign
all web addresses and operate the treasured "A" server. This legendary server,
the Holy Grail of the Internet, is described by the New Haven Advocate
as:

"a
putty-colored plastic box on a small aluminum shelf in a squat brick office
park in Herndon, Va., about an hour east of Washington, D.C. Measuring 18 inches
square and just over 7 inches high, the box looks like the other 100 million
personal computers that routinely surf the Internet. And this computer is pretty
much like the others, except for one thing: Without this box, the Internet wouldn't
work."

MY
BEATING HEART

Now
do you get it? There's a little box on an aluminum shelf  where else but
in Washington, D.C?  that contains the beating heart of the Internet.
In that box is a circuit of some kind upon which the word antiwar.com
is translated into numbers with dots between them  and that is how (if
not why) you are here, and how you can send e-mail to our web address. A key
question naturally arises: who has the keys to that box  and how,
and under what circumstances, could they open it, reach in, and take whatever
is in there?

A
GENTLEMAN CALLER

Without
the funding to complete their rather large task, Network Solutions could not
go on  but a solution to this problem (which seemed built into the scheme
from the beginning) was soon found. It just so happened that at the very moment
Network Solutions seemed to be running out of money, "a giant California military
contractor was going on a buying spree." The New Haven Advocate described
the company's corporate suitor:

"Science
Applications International Corporation (SAIC) is headquartered in an affluent
seaside town just north of San Diego. From the outside, the company's well-manicured
corporate campus looks like any other. But inside, armed guards are posted in
front of doors that bristle with high-tech locks, and lead-lined rooms hinder
would-be electronic eavesdroppers."

SPOOKS

Spooky
 and I mean that literally. Ex-CIA directors Robert Gates, Bobby
Inman, and John Deutch number among SAIC's directors, not to mention former
defense secretaries William Perry and Melvin Laird. SAIC makes virtually all
of its $2 billion yearly income from government contracts, and they acquired
Network Solutions in March 1995. In spite of plans to set up a free market in
domain names, decentralize the "A" server, and open up competition in the key
registration business, Network Solutions/SAIC has used its considerable political
clout to extend its supposedly time-limited monopoly, seemingly into the indefinite
future.

ONE
RING TO RULE THEM ALL

I
am no computer maven, but you don't have to be Linus
Torvald to understand that whomever holds that putty-colored box in their
hot little hands has literally godlike powers in cyber-space. Could it be that
handing the box over to SAIC is like some alternative version of J. R. R. Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings, in
which Sauron and not
Frodo
has been entrusted with the Ring
of Power? As Tolkien put it in his famous trilogy:

"One
Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

"One
Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

"In
the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."

WOULD
YOU?

Recent
events on the Internet  and not just the sudden "glitch" in the domain
registration process  are more than enough to raise serious questions
about what role Network Solutions is playing in all this: what is needed is
a thorough investigation, and not by the company itself but by an impartial
outside agency that can determine the truth and restore confidence in an e-economy
already badly shaken by the roiling financial markets. I would go even further
and ask: are US intelligence agencies and their Albanian trained seals endangering
the security and integrity of the Internet in a bid to discredit the Serbs and
destabilize the Milosovic government? Inquiring minds want to know. In any case,
I wouldn't put it past them  would you?

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